As a new parent, I am dissapointed that our baby and future children will not have the chance to attend the preschool.
The preschool was a nice incentive when we bought our house. This incentive does help everyone, not just 1% becuase it's a benefit that adds value to all of our homes.
It is a tough housing market. Anything to attract new young home buyers should not be disregarded without a vote from the association members.
Monday, August 17, 2009
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From a concerned parent and homeowner:
ReplyDeleteI've been living in the Lake forest beach and tennis club community now for over 17 years. Both my girls went through the Lakeview learning center with Cindy and her staff until they started kindergarten, I have nothing but praise for her and how she taught my kids in preschool. Approx. three years ago I was asked by Cindy to participate and sit on a committee that was being formed by the board of directors of the association and I volunteered. The committee was to determine weather or not the preschool facility should be shut down due to it's financial status of "operating in the red" and we were to give our input either for or against keeping it open. This was to my knowledge the first attempt by the board to shut down this facility. To start things off the president of the board was the mediator of the committee which really didn't sit right with me. He seemed like a nice guy but after listening to what he had to say you could tell he was for closing it down. It was up to six community members to try and convince The president and one other gentleman who was against keeping it open why the preschool shouldn't be shut down, also on the agenda for this committee was how we could expand the weight room next door either by closing the day care down and expanding in that direction or by building it out in the opposite direction and if it was worth doing that. From the beginning of the first meeting you could tell we were all pretty much just wasting our time. By the second meeting to my surprise and after a initial vote most members of that committee elected to keep the preschool running. I asked the president ( i think his name was Ron ) if PCM could show us a P and L sheet on the preschool, that was adamantly denied by the PCM staff (Marylyn) who If I'm not mistaken showed up at the third meeting with no documentation whatsoever to prove to us (as a committee) that the preschool was losing money. So i asked "how are we to decide on the fate of the preschool" if we can't see the financial accounting? Marilyn said your just going to have to take our word on it and at that point I knew this was going in a political direction. Come to find out the gentleman on the committee who was against keeping it open apparently uses the gym with his wife and had been complaining for years to the board about the size of the facility and was for expanding it and buying thousands of dollars of new equipment to go inside it. He knew the only way they would expand it was to take the daycare facility's space and build inside there. Apparently he has finally got his wish. From what I know the preschool facility at the beach and tennis club was suppose to be run as a non profit type of business. This to me was the reason why they couldn't show us committee members the PnL sheet attached to that facility. My belief is that the profits from the daycare facility were used to offset the expenses of the general clubhouse which is illegal to do.This could easily be done by PCM's accounting department. Non profit business' are to be run solely just for that purpose and any profit get's put back into the business to use. In closing... I only attended 4 committee meetings due to such a lack of information provided and I feel that the preschool is such an asset to the community for homeowners who are having kids to use and new homeowners looking to buy into our community. I also feel for the parents who's children are now going to have to find a new preschool in such short notice. My prediction is they will go ahead with the weight room expansion and the cost of that will be shared by all 1701 homeowners. Thank you for reading.